A trip report for the swift water recuse training, ran 14-16th December. Written mostly in the car home by Grano, Tony, Liam and Ruth.
Following and excellent swimming expedition on the Derwent, nine keen beans where ready to get their arses wet in the north of the state. Unfortunately due to spilling conditions, the Mersey was unavailable, the fun was therefore required to be had in the Forth and Bradys. At 6:30 (7:30) we arrived at the sheds to a trailer Tony had packed from Luke's prepack the night before, ready for a speedy wait for the others. Liam found a frisbee, Grano found a roof, before demonstrating that barbed wire isn't actually that sharp and jumping on to get it. With Tom's equipment unceremoniously dumped in the trailer, we rushed to Campbell Town to get to the kabab shop pre 9:30pm closing time.
Getting to forth Luke chose an excellent campsite (by searching for phone reception). Before setting up tents Grano found the beers and we all decided that a set up beer was definitely needed. We saw the first display of Ruth's magic tent that set itself up and packed it's down while all the gear fit rather neatly in a box. Two beers in a very sleepy crew scared of a 7am wake up all sensibly decided to head to bed.
In the morning the beautiful fourth presented herself with the rapid we would be working on all day right beside the camp site. We cover a range of scenarios and workshopped brilliant rescue techniques.
Luke mechavious side came out when his Oscar winning acting skills were put to use for his many and varied scenarios and injuries throughout the day.
With Bradys looming for Sunday we opted to move on and camp there for Saturday.
Arriving at Bradys we enjoyed the long sunny days and used our time to get the fire going and enjoy some dinner. with a raging fire (helped by the leaf blower) we all enjoyed a few beers and pondered life’s great questions.
a relatively early night we all tucked into bed, after an exciting night of questions and moving back and forwards towards and away from the fire as it got really hot. Some would say, hot enough to recycle tin.
I left finishing this too late to remember the details. But, Sunday we did more scenarios, got great use of the rescue board and all had a lot of fun. Rapid rescues finished us up early. We got the water turned up do practise and feel out a log swim, going under over and Tony voting to use his full force to simply go around.
With a slightly early end we opted to do some more throwbagging down melifont. I volunteered to swim, and be throwbagged. This is when I did myself a silly. Having done three swims I decided I’d do just one more - oops, famous last words. I went over a lil drop / rock and slammed my left foot into something hard. Fair to say it was ouchy. Thankfully I was in good hands. Tony swam in after me, seeing that I was not okay, and then back at camp Luke gave me the good old, it’ll be sore, but you’ll be fine. Oopsies 🤩
This course was not only informative, useful but also a lot of fun with a lovely group of club folk! Can’t wait to see the senior guides coming out of this.
See you getting wet soon,
Ruth
award nominations
Fully Cooked: Ruth steel for her fat knee calf ankle injury (still bruised at time of posting)
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